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Monday, 23 October 2017

5G Architecture Options for Deployments?

I have blogged earlier about the multiple 5G Architecture options that are available (see Deutsche Telekom's presentation & 3G4G video). So I have been wondering what options will be deployed in real networks and when.

The 3GPP webinar highlighted that Option-3 would be the initial focus, followed by Option 2.

Last year AT&T had proposed the following 4 approaches as in the picture above. Recall that Option 1 is the current LTE radio connected to EPC.

ZTE favours Deployment option 2 as can be seen in the slide above

Huawei is favoring Option 3, followed by Option 7 or 2 (& 5)

Going back to the original KDDI presentation, they prefer Option 3, followed by Option 7.

If you are an operator, vendor, analyst, researcher, or anyone with an opinion, what options do you prefer?

6 comments:

We know there will be multiple frequencies, so it isn't like 4G where it is mostly bound to the traditional sub Ghz and 2.6Ghz, but with mmWave, 3.5Ghz, 5Ghz etc.But NR talks about OFDM, which is already being used in LTE. So what is New in 5G OFDM? Likely something new in the mmWave, but how about existing frequency?

I see lots of mention of TDD in 5G presentation, are we still going to be kept with two 5G system like 4G, where one camp is TDD the other is FDD?

Another question unrelated to 5G, about Small Cell. From a high level overview, how is Small Cell ( may be with LAA ) different from a WiFi Router ( In Size, in Power usage, etc ) with 4G uplink as enchor point? If they are similar, why aren't widely deployed?

Hello,First thanks for your amazing work on this blog, it's really a treasure.I have a dumb question about the new 5G Core network, aka NGCN. Will it be :1) created from scratch with new (virtualized) nodes supporting the new functions (AMF, SMF etc) - My guessor 2) Can existing nodes (MME, SGW, PGW etc) be upgraded ?

In other words, will MNOs build the 5G NGCN aside and have (during a limited period) both cores running in parallel ?